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Viking Age
The '''Viking Age' lasted from about 840 AD until 1014 AD. It began with the intensification of Viking activities from 840 AD, after the sporadic raiding that began with Lindisfarne in 793 AD. It then ended with the beginning of the decline of the Viking threat around 1014 AD. From the coastline of Scandinavia, the Vikings created a maritime empire stretching from that stretched from central Russia in the east, to Normandy in France, to Greenland in the west, and even as far as the shores of America. The British Isles and France experienced the most dramatic influx of Viking peoples, with startlingly differing effects; it helped England and Scotland to unite into embryonic nations, while France descended fully into regional feudalism with the king as a mere figurehead. While Western Europe slumbered in the Dark Ages, the Byzantine Empire enjoyed one last great flowering, in a Golden Age ushered in by the Emperor Basil I and his successors. History The Vikings On 8 June 793, the monks on the island monastery of Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumbria in England, were unpleasantly surprised by the arrival of a ship with a dragon-headed prow, disgorging a band of pagan marauders bearing wicked axes and ruin covers swords. Sparing neither the old nor infirm, they plundered the monastery, seizing whatever looked valuable and leaving the bodies of the monks trampled "like dung in the streets" as one cleric later wrote. This was not the first encounter with the Vikings, but the attack on one of the most prominent monastic communities in the British Isles sent a shockwave throughout Western Europe. The Germanic tribes of Scandinavian obviously had a long history before they exploded onto the historical record during the Viking Age '(793-1066). In fact, this was simply the last and most dramatic exodus in the long story of migration from Scandinavia; it was probably the original home of the Goths and Vandals. Since early Classical Antiquity, the coastlines of Norway, Sweden and Denmark had been dotted with settlements, fishing and farming in a region with a very short growing season. Whenever the world-climate was favourable, Scandinavia could enjoy a population boom, and since the agricultural capabilities of the land couldn't sustain such increases, the resulted was population overspill. Invariably it was the young men, hardened by their harsh northern existence, who would coalesce into warbands and seek new opportunities elsewhere. Scandinavian society had a cult of violent personal valour even stronger than that of early medieval Europe; a man's worth had long been defined by his skill with a sword. Some historians speculate that Charlemagne's conquest of Saxony in 802, and the persecution of their fellow pagans, may have prompted the Vikings to turn from trading to raiding. Still others we know from the ''Sagas were motivated to leave through Internal feuding or the exiling of a communities bad-seeds. There is nothing very unusual in history for a barbarian peoples to erupt from their homelands to devastate a weak but relatively rich society; the same phenomena occurred with the late Roman Empire, the Muslim conquests, and the Mongol invasions. The Vikings were uniquely terrifying for a number of reasons. Unlike most of Europe, they weren't Christianised, recognised no Church sanctuary and showed no mercy. Worshiping Odin who inspired berserker madness, these hulking warriors clothed in the skins of wolves or bears appeared like something out of a nightmare of the frozen north; that they wore horned helmets is alas a modern myth dating to 19th-century theatre. Even more frightening was their mobility. At the time of the first Viking raids overseas, most of the communities in Norway, Sweden and Denmark were living in small independent settlements around the coast. The mountainous terrain and fjords of Scandinavia meant that the sea was the easiest way of communication between them, as well as with the outside would. The Vikings were masters of the sea. They were equipped with longboats, whose width made them stable enough that oars and sails could take them across seas, and with a shallow enough draft to sail up even shallow rivers far inland. This advantage should not be underestimated; Visigothic Spain was probably the last realm in the west who were capable sailors. The Vikings could raid two monasteries in a day. If an army was encountered, they could easily outrun them and look for more tempting targets. They were not especially capable in siegecraft, although they would capture many cities through surprise or trickery. The Viking were also different from other raiders in their ability to form government, allowing them to not only settle lands but to colonise them; they were the founders of Iceland and Russia, among others. They were not a literate people in terms of producing a literary legacy, at least not during the Viking Age, though they could write in runes for trading. However, the Thing was a well-established custom where all the free men of a community gathered to discuss issues, amend tribal laws, and assess the community's response to any new situation. Iceland advertises itself with some accuracy the oldest democracy in the world. Not all the Vikings sought the same thing: the Norwegians who struck out for Iceland wanted to colonise; the Swedes who penetrated Eastern Europe via the Dvina and Dnieper rivers were more interested in trade; and the Danes did most of the plundering the Vikings are now remembered for. But no group had a monopoly of any one of them. Their behaviour usually began by raiding, and then depended on the people they encountered: where the land was largely deserted such as Iceland they settled; and in Eastern Europe, where they had regular contact with the wealthy and powerful Byzantines and Muslims, they traded. It was in the wealthy but weak British Isles and France where the Vikings truly earned the reputation that defined them. Nevertheless, the impact of the Vikings on the history of even Western Europe was not entirely negative. Perhaps their major contribution was the vast commercial network they build from Central Asia to Greenland, connecting parts of the world that had previously had little or no connection. Vikings in the British Isles The Viking raid on the holy island of Lindisfarne in 793 was bloody and brief, but it was a story that would be repeated many times in the years to come. The coast of the British Isles was dotted with monasteries, not yet rich by the standards of continental monasticism, but with sufficient wealth to attract hit-and-run raids. Within two years of Lindisfarne, the undefended monasteries of Jarrow in England, Iona in Scotland, and Rathlin in Ireland were all plundered of their treasures, with many monks and others carried away as slaves. By the 820s, with coastal monasteries being increasingly abandoned, the pattern of attacks began to change: raiding parties became larger; inland settlements along rivers were targeted; and encampments were established on islands to allow the marauders to remain throughout the winter. By the late 830s, the Vikings began to settle permanent in Celtic Ireland and the Scottish islands. In 842, the Vikings set-up a well-fortified stockade on the east coast of Ireland on the banks of the River Liffey, which soon turned into an important trading-post; from these small beginnings Ireland's capital of Dublin would emerge. They also established settlements at Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Wexford. In Scotland, they were restricted to the islands: Orkney, Shetland, Hebrides, and the islands of the Firth of Clyde, as well as the Isle of Man. The Scottish Isles would remain part of the Viking Kingdom of the Isles (c. 840-1266) until the middle of the 13th century. On mainland Scotland, the Scots, Pictish and Gaelic people responded to successive clashes with the Vikings by a gradual process of unification into the Kingdom of Alba, the future 'Kingdom of Scotland '(889-1707). Myth and tradition claim this occurred under Kenneth MacAlpin in the year 843, but modern historians generally accept Donald mac Causantín (d. 900) as the first king of Scotland from about 889. He was of Pictish descent, but grew up in exile in Ireland, thus it was Gaelic culture, language, and religious life that gradually took over. It was under his son Constantine (d. 952) that the basis of all future coronations began; the crowning of the Scottish monarch on the Stone of Scone or the Stone of Destiny, the origin of which is lost to the mists of time. To the south, the Viking impact on Anglo-Saxon England was even more dramatic. Raids became increasingly common from around 830 onwards; Canterbury was successfully attacked in 835, and London was sacked in 842 and again in 851. Things dramatically escalated in 865, when a Viking army from Denmark some 1,000 strong arrived on the east coast of England, equipped for conquest rather than quick booty; the '''Great Heathen Army. Legend has it that this army was led by the three sons of the legendary Viking chief Ragnar Lodbrok, who had recently been killed by the king of Northumbria. After overwintering in East Anglia, the Viking army went over the mouth of the river Humber into Northumbria, and soon captured the capital, York, the second most important city in Anglo-Saxon England. It would become the capital of the Danish realm in England for the next ninety-years; Danelaw '''(866-954). With a puppet installed as king of Northumbria, over the next four years East Anglia too was conquered, and the king of Mercia capitulated and ceded more land to the Vikings. In late 870, with the Viking army reinforced by the Great Summer Army, they turned their attention the last of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This was Wessex and it gave England its first national hero, '''Alfred the Great (871-899). When he was born, it must have seemed unlikely that Alfred would become king, since he had three elder brothers. He had had a far travelled early life, visiting Rome twice as well as the French court with his father. Each of Alfred's brothers reigned in turn, but died in their early twenties, until Alfred became the King of Wessex in April 871. He proved both a brilliant general and a wise administrator, as well as the only monarch in English history to earn the epithet "the Great"; other than the Scandinavian Cnut the Great. The early years of Alfred's reign were merely a struggled for survival. He fought a series of battles against the Great Heathen Army, with honours to both sides, but they included the Battle of Ashdown (January 871), the first significant Anglo-Saxon victory against the Vikings. The Vikings were persuaded to withdraw in late 771; perhaps it was the stubborn opposition, but more likely Alfred bribed them to leave. Wessex was left in peace for five years, and Alfred used the time well in order to restructure of the military defences of his kingdom. It was based around a network of fortified strongholds known as Burghs ''and local militias levied from the surrounding shire, a tactic reminiscent of the Roman emperor Aurelian (270-275 AD). These strongholds would later have the unforeseen benefits, for around them market towns would gradually grow, leading to the revival of urbanisation in England. Alfred also established the beginnings of an English fleet, and by 875 could boast a modest naval victory against seven Danish ships. However, the Vikings regularly broke the peace from 756, and maybe came to appreciate that the barrier to an acquiescent Wessex was the king himself. In the middle of winter 878 they launched a surprise attack on the royal stronghold of Chippenham, and Alfred barely escaped with his life into a nearby swamp. This was the lowest ebb for the English cause, the nearest that the Vikings ever came to conquering Wessex and thus the whole of England. Within a few months however, Alfred had regrouped, winning a decisive victory at Battle of Edington (May 878), and pursuing the retreating Vikings managed to bring them to peace terms. The Treaty of Wedmore essentially agreed to the mutual co-existence of Alfred domain in south-western England, and the Viking Danelaw in the north-east. Possibly more significantly, the Danish ruler of East Anglia agreed to be baptised a Christian, both a sign that the Vikings might be divided from one another, and a step towards the eventual conversion of Scandinavia. The next time Vikings raided England in 885, the settled Danes in the east were just as motivated to defend their new home as the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred also captured London in 886, a crucial bridging point on the River Thames which flowed right into the heart of Wessex. During the remainder of his reign, Alfred was able concern himself with restoring the material and cultural well-being of his realm, which we can now call the '''Kingdom of England'. He encouraged the education of young nobles, and the translation of key works of Latins into English vernacular. An Anglo-Saxon account of English history was compiled, based on various sources including those of the Venerable Bede. He also improved his kingdom's legal system, coinage, and trade, all aimed to improve his people's quality of life. Alfred's success was sustained under his successors, who were gradually able to gain control of the Danelaw, where Christianity and civilisation did their slow work; the settle Danes gave up their brutal codes in favour of integration and assimilation, and would in the end welcome law and order. Under Alfred's son Edward (889-924), East Anglia and eastern Mercia were incorporated into the English kingdom, securing each advance by fortified strongholds on Alfred’s model. Alfred’s grandson Athelstan (924-939) conquered the last remaining Viking kingdom around York, becoming the first Anglo-Saxon king to directly rule the whole of England. But it was hardly cause for celebration. After his death in 939, the Vikings seized back control of York, and it was not finally reconquered until 954. The kingdom was finally consolidated under Edgar (959-975), and has remained in political unity ever since. It was only when ability failed in Alfred’s line under Ethelred the Unready (978-1013) that the Anglo-Saxon monarchy came to grief, as a new Danish threat resurfaced. It was during his reign that the complex family links between the Anglo-Saxons, Normans and Danes began to develop, that would ultimately lead to the Norman conquest of England. As power was being consolidated across the sea in England under the House of Wessex and in Scotland under the House of Alpin, such developments could hardly have escaped the attention of an ambitious Celtic Irish king. Ireland had a long tradition of the concept of national kingship, a High King who sat at Tara, but it only became a political reality in the Viking Age, albeit briefly. By the 10th-century, Viking Dublin and other strongholds around the coast took their place among the innumerable incessantly quarrelling Celtic petty-kingdoms; with a population of fewer than 500,000 people, Ireland had over 150 kings with greater or lesser domains. Brian Boru '(d. 1014), the chieftain of a petty-kingdom on the River Shannon, was able to build on the successes of his father and elder brother to be proclaimed king of all Munster in 978 (the south-western quarter of Ireland), in the process driving the Vikings from both Limerick and Cork. With a might army, he set about trying to control the whole island. By 1002, the south-east including Viking Waterford had submitted to Brian, and by 1011 all of the regional rulers in Ireland acknowledged his authority, as the first real ''king of Ireland. Nevertheless, no sooner had this been achieved than it was lost again. In 1013, the rulers of Leinster and Viking Dublin joined forces to revolt against Brian. While the Battle of Clontarf (April 1014) would latter be mythologised as the ultimate showdown between the native Irish and the Viking invaders, in truth it was a power struggle between rulers for the glittering prize of Dublin, the greatest trading port in the country. The battle lasted from sunrise to sunset, and in the end the Leinster and Viking forces were routed. Brian Boru had won, but wouldn't live to enjoy the fruits of victory; both he and his son died during the battle. Without Brian, the opportunity to forge Ireland into a united kingdom with a true sense of an Irish identity was lost. The country quickly descended once more into a patchwork of rival pretty-kingdoms, and vulnerable to the faithful conquest of the Normans. Vikings in France As elsewhere in northwest Europe, Viking raids along the coast of France began between 790 and 800 during the declining years of the then elderly Charlemagne. The Vikings took advantage of the royal quarrels between the sons of Louis the Pious that eventually led to the Treaty of Verdun (843), to escalate their assaults on France. Their dreaded longboats would sail up the Loire, Seine, and other inland waterways, wreaking havoc and spreading terror. The early culmination of these raids came in 845 when some 5,000 Vikings and 120 ships, supposedly led by the legendary Viking chief Ragnar Lodbrok, sailed-up the River Seine, successfully besieging and plundering Paris. The French could not assemble any effective defence against the invaders, and they were eventually bribed to leave by Charles the Bald (840–877). After 851, the Vikings were over-wintering in the lower Seine valley to extend their raiding season, and attacked Paris three more times in the 860s, only leaving each time when they had acquired sufficient tribute. The French did gradually find the way to stymie the Vikings through the use of fortified bridges. Their effectiveness was admirably demonstrated during the Siege of Paris (885-886), where two were built, one on each side of the Île de la Cité. Some 300 Viking ships and 30,000 men arrived outside Paris in late November, demanding tribute, but were refused. Despite repeated assaults and almost a year of siege, the city walls held. The man who had led the defence of Paris throughout the siege was Count Odo, son of Robert the Strong, and he was subsequently rewarded by being elected King of France from 888 to 898; throughout the next century the Robertians would fight the Carolingians for the French throne. Nevertheless, by 887 the Vikings were permanently settled in the lower Seine valley, now under the leadership of Rollo (d. 927). According to legend, he was of such enormous size that no horses could accommodate him, earning him the nickname Rollo the Walker since he had to go everywhere on foot. In 911, Rollo made another wild attempt on Paris, and when this failed, besieged the smaller city of Chartres. With no more gold to offer in tribute, the siege ended with Charles III (879-929) making Rollo an astonishing offer known as the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte. Charles granted him feudal rights to the city of Rouen and the surrounding territory of Normandy. In exchange, Rollo pledged vassalage to the French king, agreed to be baptised a Christian along with his entire army, and vowed to guard the estuaries of the Seine from further Viking attacks. Although the opposite was often the case, and Viking warbands were hosted in Normandy well into the 11th century, Viking raids on French soil did gradually subside from this point on. The marauding Vikings aggravated the already grave internal problems of the kings of France. It was impossible for the sluggish royal armies to respond to the Viking hit-and-run tactics, and more and more of his subjects put their trust in local lords, who could offer immediate protection, rather than some distant unresponsive central government. The authority of the throne had collapsed, and now it was the feudal-lords who held real power. The need for armies to be highly mobile in order to react to Viking raids, also entrenched heavy cavalry as the dominant force on the battlefield. With the stirrup, acquired in the 8th-century from the Avars, and with an exceptionally heavy breed of horse, the medieval knight was ready to take the field. A mounted knight, protected first by chain-mail and then plate-mail by the 13th-century, would drive home his lethal long lance with the full forward impetus of his powerful horse. Knighthood in turn reinforced the status of the warrior noble class, since both horse and armour were expensive. With a knight's face concealed inside armour, devices on helmet and shield were essential to identify friend from foe, thus the "Coat of Arms" was born as a glorious way of advertising one's lineage; a distinguishing mark of European aristocracies. Knights and the ideals of chivalry featured largely in medieval and Renaissance literature, and have secured a permanent place in literary romance. However, we shouldn't take these tales too seriously, since these were brutal men for whom violence was simply an accepted part of life; in any other part of the world they would be called warlords. The mounted knight would hold sway in the medieval European battlefield until new weapons in the 14th-century, such as the pike and the longbow, restored some measure of advantage to the humble infantry. For a century after the Viking Siege of Paris (885-886), the France crown was contested between the Robertian and Carolingian factions, with support for one or the other depending on where the French magnates considers their best interests lie. The foremost of these magnates were the counts and dukes of Flanders, Normandy, Anjou, Brittany, Vermandois, Toulouse, Burgundy, Gascony, Aquitaine, and Languedoc. The Carolingian dynasty ceased to rule France upon the death of Louis V (d. 987). Despite the survival of a Carolingian claimant, the Robertian faction reasserted themselves to elect Hugh Capet (987-996) king. Hugh and his immediate successors were hardly more than crowned lords, whose lands and real authority extended little beyond the Paris basin, while many of their nominal vassals ruled territories far larger. This was hardly indicative of a dynasty that would rule one of Europe’s most powerful countries for the next 800 years. Yet by a happy accident Hugh Capet's male-line descendants would succeed to the French throne without conflict for twelves generations until 1328. Thus the longevity of the Capetian dynasty played a crucial role in the formation of the French state, for these kings would slowly but steadily increased their power and influence, until it grew to cover the entirety of their realm by the reigns of Philip II (1180-1223) and Louis IX (1226-1270). Meanwhile among the French king's troublesome vassals was the duchy of '''Normandy. Charles III probably believed that his grant of land to the Vikings was a temporary measure that could be taken back later. In Rollo however he had unwittingly found a brilliant adversary. He instantly understood what he had, a premier stretch of northern France possessed of some of the finest farmland in the country, but to survive in his new home he had to win the loyalty of his French subjects. Within a generations, the Normans had abandoned their Viking traditions, and took to French feudalism, language, customs, legal system, and warfare; Viking forces always fought on foot, but the Normans would ride into their battles mounted. One final change took longer to sink in, but was no less profound, Christianity. Rollo himself hedged his bets, having one-hundred prisoners sacrificed to Odin on his death, but his descendants would embraced Christianity with fierce enthusiasm; Norman soldiers provided much of the firepower of the First Crusade. The early Norman dukes faced an uncertain future, surrounded by predatory neighbours and with the French crown always looking for an excuse to reclaim its lost territory. Nevertheless, under Rollo's descendants the Normans would not only survive but thrive, and their irresistible heavy cavalry would carry them on a remarkable tide of conquest that stretch from England to southern Italy and the Holy Land. Germany of Otto the Great In Eastern Francia, or Germany as we can now call it, there occurred the same slow decay of royal authority to the benefit of the regional dukes, as had been seen in France. Again the already grave internal problems of Charlemagne's descendants were aggravated by external threats, in the case of Germany from both the west and the east. In the west, it faced the marauding Vikings using the Rhine to penetrate far inland, although never as dramatically as in France and the British Isles; some historians speculate that her shared border with Denmark allowed for more direct political engagement with Scandinavia. The biggest Viking raid on the Rhineland was in 881-82, when elements of the Great Heathen Army turned their attentions to Germany after their defeat at the Battle of Edington (May 878) by Alfred the Great; they plundered numerous monasteries and cities including Cologne, Bonn, and, the ultimate humiliation, Charlemagne's old capital of Aachen. Meanwhile in the east, the Germans had to contend with ceaseless raids by the pagan Hungarians. Like the Huns and Avars before them, the Hungarians or Magyars were originally from the central Asian steppes. By 885 they were well-established in the Carpathian Basin (modern day Hungary), from which their superb mounted-archers would torment Germany. The fragmentation of Germany was further aggravated by strong regional rivallies between the four great duchies of Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, and Franconia, based upon strong historical tribal identities; a fifth Lorraine would frequently be disputed between France and Germany. When the Carolingian line of German kings finally petered-out in 911, the only legitimate claimant within the Carolingian Dynasty was the king Charles III of the France. Desiring a weak king, the German magnates instead elected one of their own to the vacant throne, Conrad of Franconia (911-18). When he proven too weak, the magnates next elected Henry I of Saxony (919-936). So began the central theme of medieval Germany history; strong hereditary regional magnates, and the paradox of an elected feudal overlord. Even during periods of a stable dynasty, an emperor's heir had to be elected by the magnates, who tended to accept the rule of a strong king, but to reassert their independence in other reigns. The reign of Henry's son, Otto the Great (936-973), amounts to a revival and extension of the eastern half of Charlemagne's great empire. He continued his father's work of unifying all German tribes into a single kingdom, crushing revolts by both the dukes of Bavaria and Franconia in the first two years of his reign. He then used the Christian Church as a tool to strengthened the royal authority. He wrested from the dukes the powers of appointing bishops and abbots within their territory, and increased their powers and lands, thereby making them subject to his personal control; in effect establishing a national church 600 years before Henry VIII. He spent much of his reign securing his eastern border. A Magyar raid on Saxony was successfully repulsed in 938, and another on Bavaria in 943. He then resoundingly defeated them at the Battle of Lechfeld (955), after which the Hungarians completely ceased all raids westwards; by 975 the Hungarians had begun the process of integration into Western Christendom. Victory at Lechfeld secured Otto's hold over his kingdom, but his ambition did not stop there. In Frankish northern Italy the Carolingian Dynasty had petered-out in 924, and since then the throne had been continually contested among several aristocratic families. Like Charlemagne, Otto conquered northern Italy by 951 and declared himself King of the Lombards. Yet the pope refused him an imperial coronation. Ten years later, in 962, Otto was back in Italy again in response to an appeal by the pope for help, and this time the pope crowned him Holy Roman Emperor like Charlemagne; a title that had fallen into abeyance since 924. This was the beginning of an unbroken association between the imperial title and Germany lasting for more than eight centuries. The Ottonian empire was a remarkable achievement, though it rested on the political manipulation of local magnates rather than on administration. Otto’s son married a Byzantine princess. Both he and Otto III had reigns troubled by revolt, but successfully maintained the tradition established by Otto the Great of exercising power south of the Alps. With a realm that now covered much of central Europe, Otto and his immediate successors were the leading rulers in Europe in the mid-10th and 11th centuries. The Ottonian emperors were also great patron of the arts and architecture, spurring the so-called Ottonian Renaissance (936-1002); an analogue to the Carolingian Renaissance which accompanied Charlemagne's coronation in 800. It was notable for the revived cathedral schools, for exquisite illuminated manuscripts, and for early-Romanesque architecture such as St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim. Yet Otto's reign also laid the roots of the Investiture Controversy, a powerful struggle over who held ultimate authority, secular rulers or the Pope. Otto himself deposed two popes and installed replacements more to his liking, and his successors regarded the imperial crown as a mandate to control the Church. The German emperors would decisively lose this first great clash between Church and state, leading to the fragmentation of Germany into a tapestry of small states, with the emperor as little more than a figurehead. Vikings in Russia Although there was no doubt plenty of sporadic raiding, unlike in Western Europe, the main reason that the Vikings penetrated deep into Russia during the 9th-century was trade rather than plunder. The rivers of Eastern Europe, flowing north and south, made it surprisingly easy for ships and goods to travel between the Baltic and the Black Sea. We hear of Vikings in contact with the Byzantine Empire by 838, and with the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate by 846. In the east the Vikings were known as the Rus, would give Russia her name. Russian traditional history begins with their establishment in about 860 at Novgorod, the headwaters of the Dvina, Dnieper and Volga rivers which respectively flow into the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Caspian. By 882, the Vikings had seized the town of Kiev lower down the Dnieper from the Khazar Khaganate. It quickly became the centre of a Rus and Slav river-trade-federation, after successfully negotiating a highly favourable commercial treaty with the Byzantines in 911. Here all goods were exchanged: amber, honey, wax, fur, walrus ivory, and especially slaves from Scandinavia; for silk, silver, and other commodities available to the Byzantines and Muslims. By the time Vladimir the Great (980-1015) established something resembling Kievan hegemony over all the Rus, they had begun to seem something new and different from Vikings; Russians. And in about 988 Vladimir took a step that would give Russia its characteristic identity. Legend says that he had the merits of different religions debated before him, and ultimately settled on Eastern Orthodox Christianity; supposedly Islam was rejected because it forbade alcohol, and his emissaries saw no beauty in the churches of the Germans. The new religion was rapidly and often forcibly imposed on his fellow Russians, beginning with the mass baptism of the people of Kiev. There were diplomatic dimensions to the choice too. In an unprecedented acknowledgement of the standing of the prince of Kiev, Vladimir married the sister of emperor Basil II, in exchange for an alliance against the Bulgars. But Vladimir’s choice was decisive of much more than diplomacy; the single decision which more than any other determined Russia’s future. Two hundred years later his countrymen acknowledged this; Vladimir was canonised a saint. Vikings Elsewhere The travels of the Vikings took them far and wide. In southern Europe, Lisbon and Cadiz in Muslim Spain were successfully attacked in 844. In 860, they went further, sailing into the Mediterranean and sacking the Italian port city of Luni, which according to the traditional account they believed was Rome. But it was the Viking colonisation of remote islands their was their most spectacular achievement. After settling the Scottish islands in the 830s, in 874 Viking longships were beached on uninhabited Iceland, near where Reykjavik now stands. By 930 there may have been 10,000 Norse Icelanders, living by farming and fishing, in part for their own subsistence, in part to produce commodities such as salt fish which they might trade. In that year a council called the Althing met for the first time, following earlier Norwegian practice. While some would argue Iceland's claim to be the world's oldest parliamentary democracy, her continuous historical record from this date is still a remarkable one. Two centuries later the population of Iceland was already about 75,000 people; a level not exceeded until the 20th century. According to the sagas, when Erik the Red (d.1003) was exiled from Iceland in about 986, he sailed west and pioneered Greenland. With a better sense of public relations than of accuracy, he attracted settlers to three separate colonies along roughly 400 mile of the western coast. There were to be Norsemen in this inhospitable environment until the climate changed for the worse with the Little Ice Age around the 14th-century; leaving Greenland to the native Inuit peoples. Historians no longer dispute the unmistakable archeological evidence that Vikings from Greenland even reached North America, over five-hundred years before Christopher Columbus. Norsemen created a small settlement on the northern peninsula of present-day Newfoundland, where they found the wild vine growing so named it Vinland; it lasted perhaps 20 years. Decline of the Vikings Gradually the story of the Vikings became the story of the Christianisation of Scandinavia, and the struggle of dynasties in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to establish stable kingdoms; with sometimes the added ambition of bringing the other two into a unified realm. The current Danish monarchy traces its roots back to Gorm the Old (936-958), ruling from Jelling in central Jutland. It was under his son, Harald Bluetooth (958-986), that the conquest of the whole of Denmark was completed. He was baptised a Christian sometime in the 960s, an event commemorated in Denmark's famous ruin covered Jelling Stone. The Christianisation of Norway was first attempted by Haakon the Good (934–961), who had been baptised a Christian during his English upbringing, but it was only cemented during the reign of Olav Haraldsson (1015–1028). Early in the 9th-century, the missionary St Ansgar established a church at in Sweden, but her first Christian king was Olof Skötkonung (995-1020) who is said to have been baptised in 1008. Meanwhie, Iceland too converted in 1000, when the incumbent law speaker decreed that the community should accept the new religion. Nevertheless, the Christianisation of the people was very slow and not until the mid-12th-century could Scandinavia be securely classified as Christian. After the Viking Age, Scandinavia tends not to be a major actor in European politics, except in the 17th-century when the armies of Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus terrorised Central Europe during the Thirty Years War. At various times different regions became dominant within this Scandinavian triangle. Their rulers incessantly engage in two closely related methods of affecting the balance of power; they went to war against each other, and they married one another's daughters. One such marriage led at last to the union of the three crowns under Queen Margaret I (1389-1412). The union only lasted until 1439, although attempts to restore it, sometimes briefly successful, continued for another century. Byzantine Revival Since the reign of Justinian (527-565), the Byzantine Empire had endured three-centuries of virtually ongoing crisis. The devastating Roman-Persian War (572-628) left the Empire exhausted, and contributed to major territorial losses during the Muslims conquests of the mid-7th-century. Meanwhile Byzantine territory in the Balkans were slowly swallowed up by the Bulgars and Slavs, while much needed resources were drained by the internal turmoil of the Iconoclasm Controversy (726-842). By the mid-8th-century the Byzantine Empire was nearly on its knees. But like Scipio Africanus after Cannae (216 BC), Aurelian during the crisis of the 3rd-century, and Theodosius after Adrianople (378), a man would emerged to drag the Eastern Roman Empire into one last period of glory. Michael III (842-867), whose reign brought an end to the Iconoclasm Controversy, nevertheless proved yet another weak ruler; he was known as Michael the Drunkard for his love of wine and song. Yet he made one fateful decision; to befriend and promote a uncouth Macedonian of Armenian descent named Basil. Basil leaned hard on Michael's naivety to wheedle his way deeper and deeper into his trust, until Michael made Basil co-emperor. Sixteen months later the Armenian had Michael assassinated. The bloody path to the throne of Basil the Macedonian (867-886) would have been contemptible, if he and his line had not been some of the ablest emperors in Byzantine history. In the east, Basil personally led the Byzantine army that made a continual if slow territorial advance against the Muslims of Anatolia, for the first time in almost a century. In the west, Basil improved relations with the archbishop of Rome, and, with his active support, stemmed the Muslim tide from Sicily into Byzantine southern Italy. Basil patiently rebuilt the Byzantine navy that once again became a power in the eastern Mediterranean, clearing the sea of pirates and paving the way an economic boom. This new prosperity allowed Basil to embark of a massive building program: buildings, monuments and walls across the capital were given a much-needed revamp after years of neglect; and he stamped his mark on the city with the Nea Ekklesia, the first monumental church built in Constantinople since the Hagia Sophia in the 6th-century. Basil also encouraged the archbishop of Constantinople to convert the Slavs and Bulgarians to Christianity, pulling the Balkans into the Byzantine sphere of influence. Basil’s reign led to a revival of imperial power, a renaissance of Byzantine art and architecture, and the establishment a dynasty that would see the empire achieve one last great flowering over the next century and a half; a Byzantine Golden Age (867-1025). Under Constantine VII (913–959), most of Armenia and parts of Syria were reconquered, turning the tide on Islam; the Byzantines were now the one expanding, those of the Prophet retreating. Under Nikephoros II (963-969), the Muslims were decisively expelled from Crete. He then campaigned deep into Syria putting an end to Arab raids on Byzantine territory, and most spectacularly of all, recovered the great city of Antioch. The apex of the revival of the Byzantine Empire came under the emperor Basil II (976-1025). The early years of his long reign were plagued by civil war against powerful generals, but, with boundless energy and an iron will, he outmaneuvered and outlasted them. The Bulgarians kingdom had long been a thorn in Constraninople's side with her constant raids. Despite early setbacks, the Byzantine army slowly and relentlessly began subjugating the Bulgarians in Thrace and Macedonia in a campaign that lasted nearly three decades. Eventually, after losing over a third of their land, the Bulgarians risked everything in one battle. The Battle of Kleidion (1014) was a rout for the Bulgarians, and in the aftermath Basil had fourteen-thousand captives blinded to break the remaining resistance, with one in every hundred spared one eye to lead their compatriots back to the king; it would earn him the moniker the Bulgar Slayer. The Bulgarians formally submitted four years later, and under a relatively light Byzantine yoke, would remain part of the empire for almost two-hundred years. However, his most far-reaching decision was to offer the hand of his sister to Prince Vladimir of Kiev, leading to the conversion of the Russians to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Basil had expanded the empire more than any emperor since Heraclius, created an army second to none, and cowed the fractious Byzantine nobles. Had anyone half as capable succeeded him, the empires prosperity would have been assured. However his successors squandered the inheritors, neglecting the army and engineering in only 46 years the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Manzikert (1071) from which the empire never recovered. Perhaps the historian John Julius Norwich said it best, "(Basil II) died on 15th December. By the 16th, the decline had already begun". Rise of Regional Muslim Powers From the 9th century, the rule of the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad was in many parts of the Muslim world no more than nominal. From 756, Spain under the Umayyads was completely independent. Northwestern Africa fell to a local Moorish Idrisid dynasties in 788 that was at least friendly to the Caliphate. Eastern Persia also fell to locals from the 820s, that became increasingly hostile to Baghdad by about 870. In 929, Umayyad Emir of Spain declared himself fully independent as Caliph. The weakness of the Caliphs tempted Abbasids into a policy that would only make the problem worse; a reliance of the excellent Mamelukes slave-soldiers. Well-placed to advance their own interests, they frequently took the opportunity. By 868, a Mamelukes general called Ahmad ibn Tulun had seized control of Egypt. Egypt swapped hands numerous times over the subsequent decades, until the Fatimid Caliphate established hegemony over a broader swathe of the Mediterranean coastline from Carthage to Cairo to Palestine. Crucially, the Fatimid dynasty of Cairo were the first major Caliphate of the Shi'a branch of Islam, rather than Orthodox Sunni Islam; a schism in Islam that dated back to the succession to Muhammad. The Fatimid dynasty even contested the Abbasids for even the nominal authority over the Islamic world, and any semblance of centralised rule over the Muslim world had disintegrated. Nonetheless, the cultural Golden Age continued unabated and by the year 1000, Cordoba in Spain was challenging Constantinople for the position of most spectacular city of the medieval Europe. Both had populations of nearly half a million, while Paris and London were disease ridden firetraps with barely 25,000 inhabitants. The rise of the Seljuk Turks would further disrupt the Muslim world, leaving in vulnerable to a new group of invaders; the Crusaders. Category:Historical Periods